Shivering World Page 11

  “I’m heading back north tomorrow, as soon as the track-­trucks are running again.”

  That was one disadvantage of relying on solar energy. Limitless it might be, but battery power wouldn’t carry heavy trucks far in darkness. “Stay warm.” He switched off, reached for his monitor control, and then hesitated, laying his forearm on the smooth desk cover.

  So he would be challenged. True humility, he’d been told, meant acknowledging his gifts and using them to serve others. He hoped he wouldn’t cling to authority just because he liked being respected, but what life would he have chosen if he hadn’t been drawn into leadership?

  He would like more quiet time with his children. Really, he could learn to enjoy any work where he felt genuinely useful.

  I’m ready, he told himself, for any turn of events. Still, it would feel good to talk this over—but not with Ari.

  Kenn VandenNeill, vice-­chair for Budget, was a church brother. Lindon made the call and explained Chenny’s news. “The worst of it,” he finished, “is that Ari really is entitled to disrupt everything at this point. Elections within the First Circle can be called by any committee member.”

  “I wouldn’t worry.” Kenn’s voice filtered through the headrest speaker. “Ari MaiJidda hasn’t got the public profile for office.”

  “Maybe not.” On Goddard, homozygous Lwuites, those who had pure Lwuite genes on both sides of the family, had every advantage. Ari’s extramarital birth—her mother’s indiscretion—also counted against Ari in subtle genetic ways. “The other reason I called,” he said, “is that I have to speak with Melantha Lee again. I could use prayer.”

  “About the cooling?”

  “Yes. I’ve had five people ask me about it this Goddarday. Five who speak probably means fifty more who say nothing. I was elected to represent them all.”

  Over the private audi line, Kenn VandenNeill exhaled onto his pickup. “Lindon, you went to Lee before. It didn’t help.”

  True. Melantha Lee had retreated like a poked turtle. “I backed down too quickly.”

  “If Lee does know why the warming reversed,” Kenn said, “and if she’s refusing to tell us, things could get sticky between the CA and Gaea buildings. You know that.”

  There it was, out in the open: their suspicion that Gaea, or at least Melantha Lee, knew about or was even orchestrating the climatic change that endangered them all. “If something has gone wrong,” Lindon said carefully, “and nothing is done about it, our lives are in jeopardy. Our children could be moved offworld, and then what would happen to them?” Kenn had children, too. “We depend on Gaea.”

  “So we can’t antagonize them.”

  “But there’s new evidence,” he said sharply. “I spoke with one of our young people who works in their meteorology department. Did you know the records show two consecutive G-­year drops in temperature?”

  “Hmm. Lindon, if you botch a confrontation with Melantha Lee, and if Ari does call a challenge election, some people might vote against you just to pacify the Gaea people. They could say, ‘Better a sincere atheist than a religious man who makes mistakes.’ ”

  Lindon nodded, though Kenn couldn’t see him. The alleged Lwuite religion was, after all, a sham. The circumstances of his birth forced him to live a lie, and he didn’t like it. His faith was deep and real, and he could respond honestly to questions about religion—if he took them as referring to him, personally. Others might draw the inaccurate conclusion that all Lwuites shared his views.

  Still, the Religious Liberties Act was their only legal protection. Goddard colony recognized all faiths—ancient and modern, logical and illogical. Fearing that their leaders might be questioned by Eugenics Board agents, they’d always elected believers who could honestly shelter behind the RL Act. Chenny was Noetic. Effi GurEshel of Port Arbor, like her sister Dr. Yael GurEshel, was an Orthodox Jew.

  Henri and Palila Lwu’s only faith had been universal peace and a certainty that people who hoped to live more than 150 years wouldn’t risk that life-­span by fighting one another.

  “The EB isn’t likely to question our leaders anymore,” Kenn said. “Not here.”

  “No? What if we have a spy among us?”

  Kenn didn’t answer. Lindon fingered the desktop. He would live with the ramifications of every mistake for 120 terrannums. His daughters would endure them even longer. “If we hadn’t been forced to fill that Gaea position so quickly, we wouldn’t have a Brady-­Phillips here.”

  “Do you suppose she knows her pay comes out of Goddard’s production?” Kenn asked.

  That was a sensible question. “It’s possible she doesn’t.”

  “I’ll mention it if I see her,” Kenn said coolly.

  “I doubt she would feel guilty about that. She claims she’s cash-­motivated.”

  “The Eugenics Board pays well.”

  “I know, though she claims she’s no longer affiliated. And—now, this is something, Kenn—she is worried about the cooling. I sent Liberty JenChee to work with her, so we’ll recoup Liberty’s salary from Gaea, at least.”

  “Brady-­Phillips came into Gaea at assistant professor’s wages, didn’t she?” Kenn, true to his position with Budget, seemed determined to ignore Lindon’s diversion. “How much will her triannum cost the colony? Forgetting, for the moment, anything recouped by her hiring a tech.”

  “Associate professor.” Lindon pulled the figures out of memory. “Four hundred thousand maxims, more or less.”

  Kenn’s whistle made Lindon lean away from the audi pickup. “You’re right,” Kenn was saying when Lindon leaned close again. “That would make a good excuse to offer Melantha Lee.”

  “I’ll be careful,” he said, “but I do have to talk with her. If I . . . submit a proposal to send Dr. Brady-­Phillips back offworld, may I count on you to support it?”

  “If I can count on you,” Kenn answered, “not to push Lee too far today. Put off calling her for at least an hour. Wait until you’re perfectly calm. Then, if you still feel you must speak out, be careful anyway. It’s my guess you’ll decide the risk isn’t worth it.”

  “You’ll pray?” Lindon asked.

  “Of course.”

  An hour later, Lindon’s conscience clamored louder than ever. The cooling was Gaea Consortium’s problem, and nothing was being done, and if everyone kept quiet out of fear for his own position, Goddard might freeze over.

  Lindon did not dare let ambition make him too cautious. If Goddard were lost because he hunkered down for re-­election, he’d never forgive himself.

  Staring up at the tall white crane behind Dr. Melantha Lee’s desk, he spoke carefully for ten minutes, accusing no one, addressing only his concerns. “In any organization,” he concluded, “there are occasions when an employee either disregards or counteracts policy and then is afraid to admit it. We could announce a waiver of any penalty, professional or otherwise, to see if anyone admits knowing why the planetary greenhouse may be failing.” Forgiveness—the universe’s highest incentive—sometimes settled everything.

  Melantha Lee rocked her chair, resting both hands on the armrests. When she raised one gray eyebrow, his stomach settled hard. She’d only been letting him dig his grave deeper. “Tell your concerned people,” she said irritably, “that if they will continue to administer CFC production, domestic crops, and livestock, and settle personal and political differences between colonial factions, Gaea Consortium will take full responsibility for Goddard’s ecosystem until it has been examined, adjusted, and declared self-­sustaining.”

  He decided to speak plainly, since she obviously meant to send him away empty-­handed. “We are two degrees colder than last winter, Dr. Lee. It took only two degrees of climatic change to spark the disaster on Messier.”

  Melantha Lee folded her fingers. “I shall convey your concern at the next weekly supervisor meeting. Thank you for coming, Chairman DalLierx.”

  “Thank you.” For what? he wondered. He stood and strode back out across the Gae
a building’s grandiose marble-­paved lobby. The Gaea off-­worlders made every effort in dress, eating habits, and building construction, to remind his people that they would soon leave Goddard and return to a more opulent life.

  Or was his difficulty the memory of a favored childhood, of having only to ask for gifts and they were his, of the comforts of Einstein Habitat and of the Lierx family money his daughters would not enjoy?

  ―――

  He sat in his office chair again, talking to the audi pickup, staring at patterns in the concrete wall. “I promised I’d call you back.”

  “How did it go?” Kenn’s voice asked.

  “I was told to mind my own business.”

  “Did she seem angry?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “That’s a relief. Maybe she—”

  Kenn’s next words were drowned out by a double explosion that burst through Lindon’s office door. The larger projectile slowed to a walk when Lindon held a finger to his lips, but eight-­year-­old Sarai decelerated only when both her arms squeezed his neck. Her hair, freshly shampooed and damp near the scalp, smelled sweet and soapy.

  “Kenn,” he said into the pickup, “my girls are here. May I call you later, at home?”

  “You’ll have to. This won’t wait.”

  Nothing ever would wait. He switched off the connection, reached over his shoulder, and pried thin arms from his throat. “Sarai, be gentle. That hurts.”

  Tiny black-­haired Sarai slumped around in front of him, poking out her lower lip. The crèche mother, he observed, had to stop giving her special treatment. She wasn’t so sickly that discipline would harm her.

  Bee waited at the end of his desk, flicking one corner with her finger. She looked more than two terrannums older than her tiny sister. At ten, she was starting to question who and what she was. A fascinating child, she deserved a long, secure future. “Daddy, they gave me my own terminal this week.”

  “Congratulations.” He extended a hand, and she threw back her head to laugh as she shook it. Bee’s eyes showed the epicanthic fold, widest near the ridge of her nose, like her mother’s. Lindon pulled her in, then seized Sarai and gathered both daughters into a communal hug, squeezing away hurtful memories.

  Victim of a freak meteor puncture of Einstein Habitat when six months pregnant, Cassandra died in seconds, shaking two-­year-­old Bee loose from all security, leaving Sarai a fragile preemie and Lindon a stunned young widower.

  “All right, then, is it the co-­op tonight or does Daddy cook?”

  “You cook!” Bee spun free and twirled on the office’s slick flooring.

  “Daddy cooks,” Sarai insisted simultaneously, still clinging to him.

  He squeezed her once, then pushed back his chair. “All right. I’ll try.”

  ―――

  Lindon used his small kitchen only once a G-­week, for dinner with his daughters every Sunday. Bee and Sarai devoured the stir-­fried shell peas and vat-­grown shrimp all three had peeled together as if they knew nothing tastier. “You don’t know how tired I am of co-­op food,” Bee declared as she carried a pile of dirty stoneware from the table.

  “Me too.” Sarai leaned back on her chair, closing her dark brown eyes and showing curly lashes.

  Lindon slid along his concrete bench. “Help your sister, Me-­Too. Daddy cooked.”

  Sarai stalked to the sink. So thin, he observed silently, watching his daughters. Bee, after two terrannums a master at minimizing usage of the precious supply of purified water, directed Sarai to the towel. In a few short terrannums, they’d be women. They would marry and bear children.

  And what of their unborn sons, his grandsons?

  Lindon knew his medical history. Delivered prematurely and immediately treated with temporary cerebral cohormones, he had central brain tissues that were richer in cross-­hemispheric connections than those of an untreated man. He could think, he’d been told, like a man, but he understood holistically, like a woman. He truly wondered if the risks involved in such treatments were justified by the only slight changes in behavior even Henri Lwu’s most faithful supporters had been able to document. His brother certainly showed no holistic tendencies.

  It was his other heritage—the illegal genetic manipulation—that troubled him more. In his opinion, gene work was simply another medical tool humanity must subject to God’s higher laws of righteousness and humility. For instance, God surely had reasons to limit the human lifespan.

  Yet his parents, also believers, had sought out the treatment. He’d listened to their explanations but never really understood.

  One thing, however, he understood well. He had inherited not just a sin nature but illegally obtained chromosomes. He’d had no choice over either inheritance. His body was virally altered, his seed infected . . . but his mind was that of a habitant. His parents knew no other world view. They couldn’t teach him to think in so long a term as 150 terrannums. Feeling his way along that path would be tricky. Teaching his girls to do so would be even harder.

  Oddly, thinking about eternity came easier. His salvation rested not on what he’d been given or even on what he did with it but on faith alone. He hoped to prove, by his life, that people who were born “physically fallen” in Lwu as well as “spiritually fallen” in Adam had the same need—the same chance—for redemption.

  He wanted to propose an end to the dangerous newborn treatments. But unless he stepped carefully, that revolutionary declaration could ruin his political career, and plainly—at least for the moment—God wanted him in office. Goddard’s cooling was urgent, but all their work, from the Lwus’ era right up to the present, could come to nothing if Graysha Brady-­Phillips reported to her mother.

  “Three hours until you have to go back.” Lindon stood up as Sarai delicately piled his stoneware dishes. “What would you like to do this week?”

  “Climb the crater,” Bee returned instantly. “Darrin got halfway up the wall yesterday, and I’m at least as strong as he is.”

  “No, Bee. We have to do something together.” Something Sarai can do, he wanted to add, but he cherished the tiny girl’s self-­confidence.

  “I’ll climb,” Sarai insisted. “I can do it.”

  She wanted to try? He considered, then decided that even failure had its pleasures and taught its lessons. He checked the outside temp. Six below freezing: not too bad. Whether or not they managed the climb, a walk through the sapling forest to Axis’s crater rim would keep them from going stale underground. “We can try,” he said. “Gloves, hats, and goggles. Boots, too.”

  Bee danced a small circle on the kitchen floor.

  Focus:

  Goddard

  On a broad sandy ledge created by slumping of the crater’s inner wall, Lindon settled into a nest between boulders. Little Sarai sat panting between his arms. Wearing her middleweight parka for the warm, late Sunday with Eps Eri high in the sky, Bee scrambled toward the next slumped ledge. Beneath her gray knit cap, brown braids dangled over her jacket.

  “She’s always doing that,” Sarai whined. “It’s not fair.”

  “You said you’d try.” Lindon pressed her shoulders with both arms. “And look how far we got.”

  He gazed down over the plantation. Beyond the circular scars and short landing strips of the spacefield/airport complex, concrete buildings and white smokestacks were making Axis’s original dome and bunkers hard to pick out. One new stack billowed a pale steam of greenhouse gases.

  Water-­settling beds and a shining shelter zone made the nearer ground look like a textured quilt, green on green on yellow-­tan, under imported plastic that protected the ground from cold and ultraviolet in the beggarly atmosphere. Other greenhouses gleamed in game-­board rows, rooftop solar panels tilted toward Eps Eri’s face. Clusters of brown and black dots that were goats, sheep, and halfers fed at long concrete troughs.

  We’ve done so much and come so far, he observed. Only a pioneer truly grasped this kind of beauty—that of accomplishment,
of weeks and months invested by hundreds of hands in each halfer shelter and smokestack. Outside the shelter tents, in another season, he would see more shades of green, crops created specifically for this world.

  He huddled closer to his daughter, impressed by how little climbing it took to earn this view. On the northwestern rim, they sat sheltered from prevailing winds in an area where sunshine had melted off the recent storm’s snow. He loosened his coat—not without a struggle, since Sarai would not lean away and his goggle strap kept sliding down the back of his head. To their left, a four-­hundred-­meter waterfall veiled its cut in the crater wall. Narrow, icy Peace Reservoir stretched eastward, ten kilometers into the distance, where a pumping station stood ready to send excess away through the crater’s rim when rains and snowmelt brought in enough to call “excess.” Today, thank heaven, the reservoir looked full, a banked account against need. At the end of the reservoir nearest Axis Plantation, five circular treatment pools reflected the sky in shades of blue that varied with their icy crusts’ thickness.

  He settled his back against hard stone, cherishing his daughter’s weight against his chest. He hadn’t been up here in almost a Goddard-­year, not since new plantings of duradurum wheat had sprouted inside the crater, along the highway to Center Settlement. Under a white blanket of snow, the likes of which hadn’t fallen here in thousands of years, finger-­long wheat stems waited for planetary spring. Within a few G-­weeks they would shoot up, if all went well. Along a streak where howling wind had blown the snow away, he spotted the dark green of dwarfalfa and the even darker cold-­tolerant kudzu, both struggling for root holds. They would be excellent forage some day.

  A recently released bird declared its territory up over the ledge, singing short, strident chirps. They made perfect sense to Lindon. He had come to love this world, stark as it was. Its asymmetry, its potential, its very wildness touched his spirit.

  “How’s school?” he murmured, making a pillow of his parka hood and leaning his head against the rocks.